Whistling in the Dark

CHAPTER THIRTY

On the ride home from the hospital the windshield wipers were going back and forth and back and forth like that metronome Mother kept on top of the piano to help you keep time when you couldn’t keep it yourself. When we pulled up in front of our house, Nell said, “Sally… we’re here.” She did not say, “Sally… we’re home.”

Mrs. Goldman was in her front window like she was keeping an eye out for somebody. I looked over at Troo, who was looking back at me like she had something on her mind. Whatever it was, I knew she would wait until we were alone, when it was just the O’Malley sisters, because Troo still thought Nell was a drip even if she was getting married and we got to be flower girls.

“I’m gonna head over to Kroger and get some boxes,” Eddie said.

Nell yelled to us, “Run between the raindrops, O’Malley sisters,” as we dashed for the porch. That was what Mother always said on days like this. Nell was becoming more like Mother by the minute. Like an ugly old caterpillar with horrible-looking hair, Nell was turning into a butterfly that could be on the Breck shampoo bottle.

When Nell took her key out to unlock the front door, because everybody had been told to lock their doors now because of the dead girls, Mrs. Goldman said through her screen door, “Liebchin, may I speak to you, please?” I thought I saw sad beams coming out of her like the Baby Jesus on his holy cards. In her German accent she said, “I am so sorry, I am so sorry. We have to rent to somebody who can pay. Do you understand this?”

Nell and Troo were stomping up the steps to get their things together because neither one of them liked Mrs. Goldman as much as I did. Besides the Butchy problem, they thought our landlady was a very wet blanket because she was always telling us to be quiet. But what they didn’t know was that Mrs. Goldman’s ears got very sensitive in the concentration camp and any sort of loud noises would make her have a headache that wouldn’t go away for days.

“Yes, I understand,” I said, walking toward her. “Please don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay now.”

She opened the door a little and handed me a plate of those chewy brown sugar cookies and a white paper bag. “Inside is a book for you. I know how you like to do the reading.”

I turned to leave but then remembered my manners. “Thank you. And if Mr. Goldman wants me to come back and help him pick caterpillars off those tomato plants, I can do that.” I looked into her brown eyes that had seen so many bad things. “Do you think that Dottie Kenfield is a ghost?” Mrs. Goldman was the only person, besides Troo, who’d heard the sounds coming from Dottie’s window. I had to know that before we left. If it was Dottie’s ghost crying, I didn’t think I could move and leave her all alone.

“Nein, that is no ghost. Sometimes it is better to think about things in your imagination to get away from what is really happening, no?” I knew she was thinking of the concentration camp then because she always squinted her eyes and the lines around her mouth got as deep as a garden furrow. “Do you understand this? That sometimes real life it is too frightening for people so we leave it for a while and think about other things?”

“I think I understand.” She musta had to think about a lot of other stuff when she was in that concentration camp. Like her favorite things. Chocolate ice cream and cold red apples and this meat she got from Opperman’s Butcher Shop called schnitzel. “So who is that crying in Dottie’s room if it isn’t a ghost?”

Mrs. Goldman turned toward our neighbors’ house. “I believe it is Audrey Kenfield that you hear crying. Dottie’s mother.”

Mrs. Goldman looked at me like she was deciding something and then she seemed to make up her mind and then changed it again but finally said, “Mr. Kenfield made his daughter to leave his house after she became pregnant and was not married. Dottie is forbidden to come back home and… that is why Dottie’s mother cries. She is yearning for her lost daughter and the daughter of her lost daughter.”

I looked at Mrs. Goldman’s eyes real hard for a minute. And then down at those numbers on her arm. “I will come to visit you all the time. I will. I promise.” I knew she was telling the truth about Dottie because Mrs. Goldman would never lie to me. Especially about something like that. Since Mrs. Goldman’s daughter, Gretchen, never came back to the concentration camp after her shower, she probably knew what a mother who had lost her child would sound like.

“Marta, you are letting in of the flies,” Mr. Goldman said from inside the house.

“That book… you… one of my favorites.” Mrs. Goldman put hands on my shoulders and pulled me into her for a bear hug, which she had never done before even after the day I picked over twenty-five weeds out of the garden. “Offveedersane, Liebchin,” she said and closed the door.

I ran up our stairs two at a time and through the door that went into the living room. Newspapers were scattered across the floor and dust bunnies bulged in the corners and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer bottles lined the windowsills full of cigarette butts. It smelled of a place that nobody cared about anymore. I thought of Mother when I looked over at the stained red-and-brown couch. And how, after she thought Troo and me had fallen asleep at night, she would sit there sometimes and stare out the window, never seeming to find what she was looking for. But now maybe she had.

I sat down on the piano bench and opened up the white paper bag that Mrs. Goldman had given me. A Secret Garden. That was very thoughtful of Marta Goldman. Maybe I could learn more about gardening from this book, and when I came back to help them they would be amazed by what a better gardener I had become. Rasmussen, he was a good gardener, too. So maybe if I wanted to I would learn something from him. Which I wasn’t all that sure yet that I wanted to. To forgive Mother was one thing… but to forgive Rasmussen? That might take some doing.

When I went into our bedroom to start putting my clothes into piles, so that when Eddie came back with the boxes I would be prepared, Troo was laying on our bed, spread out like she was making a snow angel in the room made dark by the storm. I tried to turn on the little lamp on the dresser but nothing happened.

Troo said, “What did Mother tell you?”

I knew this would bug Troo so I laid down next to her and told her. About how Daddy wasn’t my real daddy. How Rasmussen was. And about our green eyes. When I was done, she was so quiet. I figured she was just too sad to say words. So I quickly said, “I have a secret for you, too.” I knew that would make her happier because Troo loved a good secret and was most of the time good about keeping them.

We were both looking up at that crack that ran across the ceiling like the Honey Creek. I felt around for her hand and stroked it with my thumb the way she liked me to. “Daddy, right before he died,” I said quietly, “he told me to tell you that it was okay.” I said it right out like that because I thought that was the best way to do it, like when you went swimming and the water was too cold it was just a Chinese torture to go in slowly. Better just to jump right in.

I took her face in my hands and looked into the windows of her soul. “Daddy wanted me to tell you that the crash wasn’t your fault.”

Troo pulled away and turned to the wall. She wasn’t making any noise, but I could tell by her breathing. It was the first time I had seen my sister cry since forever. I gently lifted her head and set it back down on my Sky King- smelling pillow.

Nell came in and said, “What’s goin’ on in here?” She had a mop and other cleaning things.

I said, “Nothin’.”

“What’s wrong with Troo?”

“Nothin’.”

“I’m gonna clean this place up and then Eddie will take you over to Officer Rasmussen’s.”

“Today? But I thought we were just packing today.” That felt too surprising to me. Too quick. “Are you going to stay at Rasmussen’s?”

I thought Nell was going to say mind your own beeswax, you little brat. “I’m going to stay with Eddie because Mrs. Callahan said that would be fine now that we are getting married.” She looked over at Troo, who was still thunderstorm crying because she had saved up so many tears from since Daddy was dead and she hadn’t cried like I had, which was more like spring showers sprinkled here, there and everywhere. Nell didn’t say anything to Troo, but to me she said, “You know, Sally, you don’t always have to play second fiddle.”

Since I didn’t play the second fiddle or any other musical instrument, I thought Nell might be drunk again, especially since she grinned at me before she left. Yes, I was sure of it now. Nell was drunk.

I laid back down next to Troo and rubbed her back that was going in and out so fast. Since she still hadn’t said anything, I thought she might go quiet and give up on talking like she did after the crash. But as always, my sister was full of surprises. “I have a secret for you, too,” she said to the wall.

I wasn’t really that excited to hear another secret because I pretty much had had it with secrets that day.

“I put my hands over Daddy’s eyes,” Troo said. “Right over his eyes.”

The rain was coming down hard outside our bedroom window, a sound I usually liked, but it was too loud and a branch rubbed against the pane like it was trying to break in.

“On the way home from the game, Daddy and Uncle Paulie were fighting,” Troo whimpered. “I wanted them to stop so bad. They were yelling about you and something about your birthday and I wanted them to pay attention to me so I played peek-a-boo with Daddy in the car even though he told me to stop, and that’s why he ran into the tree and that sound was so bad, the sound of the car smashing.” She was holding the edge of the pillow between her teeth to keep them from chattering. “I’m… I’m so sorry for killing Daddy.”

Poor, poor Troo. What an awful shocking secret to have to hold on to for such a long time. I stroked her back and said, “Daddy said it’s not your fault and he meant it. I promise you on the O’Malley sisters’ hearts of love and all that is holy on Heaven and Earth, he forgave you.”

When Troo was sure I was telling the truth, she said in a baby voice, “Could I have a glass of water, please?”

On my way to the kitchen, I could hear that Troo had gone back to her crying, which was not only about her sadness but the sadness she thought she caused others she loved, the worst kind of sadness. Maybe after a while Troo would forgive herself, but I knew she’d never, ever forget hearing the sound of the car going into that elm.

Just like I’d never, ever forget the look on Daddy’s face on August 2, 1959.

“I’m disappointed in you, Sal,” he’d said that morning. He was angrily pulling weeds out of the little vegetable garden I had begged him to plow for me. “Instead of going to the ballpark with me today, you’re gonna stay home and work on your garden. I’m takin’ Troo instead.”

“But, Daddy,” I cried. “I’ve been looking forward to this game all week.” We were going to sit in the hot sun and eat salty peanuts and hot dogs with mustard and relish and sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretches. It was a double-header against the Cards.

“I guess you shoulda spent less time looking forward and more time weeding. By the time I get home, it better look like somebody tends this garden. Like somebody cares about it.” He wiped his hands off on his overalls and stomped off toward the house.

I yelled at his back, “But you promised.”

He stopped for a second like he’d changed his mind, but then he just kept going toward the house.

“I hate you,” I yelled to his back. “I wish I had another daddy.”

The screen door slammed behind him.

I had visited that secret so much since he died that sometimes I worried it had left my heart in tatters that would never get mended.

Granny kept telling me time heals all wounds. I didn’t know about that.